


She'll Be Gone

by sapphire2309



Category: White Collar
Genre: Dark!Elizabeth, F/M, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2018-03-19 02:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3592593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire2309/pseuds/sapphire2309
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every Thursday, at midnight, Elizabeth grew wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She'll Be Gone

**Author's Note:**

> This fills the prompt "wings" on my [](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[hc_bingo](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/) card. Title from Cinderella by Steven Curtis Chapman.  
> My first attempt at Wing!fic, and it was a scary and exhilarating ride! Hope you enjoy.

OMG, you guys, [](http://aragarna.livejournal.com/profile)[**aragarna**](http://aragarna.livejournal.com/) made me a cover for this fic! And it's so pretty! Look see!!

  
  


  
“You don’t have to do this,” Elizabeth whispered so that only Peter could hear.

“Do you, Peter Burke, take Elizabeth Mitchell to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“Please, Peter. Don’t do this to yourself.” She was surprised at the lack of tears in her eyes.

“I do,” he said, so strong, so full of conviction, and she didn’t know if it was for her or for the minister.

“Do you, Elizabeth Mitchell, take Peter Burke to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do,” she whispered, just loud enough to carry across the church, because she couldn’t break this off, even if it would be better for him to never see her face again. She loved him too much.

She got through the rest of the ceremony somehow, speaking when she had to speak, slipping the ring she’d chosen onto his finger, barely standing up straight.

“You may now kiss the bride.”

Peter pushed the veil back and looked into her eyes with so much love, so much faith that she thought maybe, just maybe, they could make this work.

It was even more sensual than the foot popping, back arching kiss he gave her in front of the entire church.

-:-

  
Peter’s one greatest fear was that somewhere in the pain, Elizabeth might begin to hate him. Or, even worse, decide that she didn’t need him there.

He did his best to avoid every possible fight on the first few days of their honeymoon.

He held chairs and doors for her, he let her decide all the activities even though he wanted to lounge in hammocks all day, he touched her like she was fragile, like she could disappear if he made even one mistake.

Elizabeth was rarely more surprised by her husband than she was the day she opened the door by herself, when he cringed and closed his eyes like a thief who’d almost smashed a vase.

“Peter?” she asked.

“I’m so sorry, I know I should have got to it but I didn’t and now you’ll be mad and you’ll leave because I couldn’t get to a stupid door and-”

“Peter.”

He stopped, cringing again.

“I won’t leave you if you forget to hold the door for me. Even at midnight on Thursdays.”

Peter relaxed a little after that.

Elizabeth was a perceptive woman. She didn’t miss the way he always agreed with her about anything that may trigger an argument. She didn’t miss his quiet, mumbled prayer on Sundays at church – _please, if anything happens to me on the job, let it not be a Thursday._ She didn’t miss the way his body sagged with relief every time she told him, “I’m not mad at you.”

-:-

  
Every Thursday, at midnight, Elizabeth grew wings.

She’d spend most of the day with a tingling back and a tremor that periodically made its way down her arm, like a tentative butterfly, afraid of poking its wings out of the cocoon because it felt so safe.

She was lucky, her mother had said, that she turned at a time when no one would question her locking herself in her room. Elizabeth thought her mother was luckier - she turned on Monday mornings.

The wings seemed to know when her mind wandered, because her arm trembled whenever she was peacefully lost in a daydream.

At midnight came the real pain.

She wore a halter neck to bed, because it was tiring to replace torn shirts all the time. She tied her hair carefully, making sure that not even a single strand hung loose, because the wings fluttered continuously when something touched them.

Peter wore a brave face and held her and let her bury her face in his shoulder, waiting for the wings to rip their way out of her back.

He’d take the wings if it meant always having and holding this beautiful woman in his arms.

He hated that she could never wear halter necks in public. He hated that every time the wings tore out of her, blood dripped down her back and soaked into the soft cotton fabric and that, an hour later, when they shrank and disappeared into her back, the skin they left behind always looked a little more scarred.

“Why don’t you fly?” Peter had asked her after she told him, reluctantly, that flying made the pain insignificant.

Elizabeth had looked him deep in the eyes and said, “You’re not ready to know yet.”

-:-

  
They never had children. Elizabeth wouldn’t budge on that. She didn’t want a child to carry the burden she did, the desire to fly warring with the need to stay on the ground. She’d had a hysterectomy as soon as she turned eighteen, to make sure that even by accident, she didn’t make a child suffer through this. 

-:-

  
The first and only time Peter got home past midnight on a Thursday was when he had a lead on James Bonds. He lost track of time, as it was so easy to do when you were trying to track down champagne sent to your surveillance van.

He was amazed by Bonds’ cockiness. A champagne bottle sent to an FBI van, without the fear of being caught was, all said and done, quite ballsy.

He looked at the clock eventually.

At eleven forty-five.

He was never going to get home in time.

He grabbed everything he could see that belonged somewhere in his overcoat and ran for the door.

The engine of the Taurus purred happily at the force Peter was placing on the accelerator. The traffic gods kindly cleared the way to the Brooklyn townhouse.

His phone didn’t ring. Before midnight, Elizabeth would have trusted that he was on his way, driving, stuck in a traffic jam. After, the pain must have been too much for her to see the numbers on the keypad.

He reached the townhouse fifteen minutes after midnight.

He opened the door, torn between the fear of what Elizabeth would do if he went in and the consequences if he didn’t.

“Elizabeth?” he called, one hand pushing the door back.

The second the door clicked shut, he felt hands grab him by the collar and slam him against it.

“Where exactly were you?”

The voice must belong to Elizabeth, because it was coming from a mouth that looked like hers which was on a face that looked like hers. But her voice was completely feelingless and her eyes had a mad glint in them.

He looked down.

Her feet weren’t touching the ground.

This was what she didn’t want to tell him.

“Where _were_ you?” She almost screamed.

Peter decided that it was in his best interests to answer, even though his tongue felt like it had been replaced by a stone. “I was, uh, at the office. Chasing down leads on-”

“James Bonds!” Elizabeth cackled. “Pretty boy James Bonds and his cocky little tricks, sending birthday cards and calling at godforsaken hours of the morning. Oh, he's just _so_ amazing. Does he matter so much to you that you couldn’t be home before midnight?”

She left his collar and flew to the bookshelf, where she opened an album and started flicking through it aimlessly.

The blood was still on her back.

Peter took a step in the direction of the kitchen, where a dozen cloths were tucked into a cupboard.

Elizabeth dropped the album on a sofa, swooped across the room and slammed him into the door again.

“Did I say you could move?”

He shook his head. Her eyes moved across his face, searching his face for something.

Suddenly, she left him and went back towards the bookshelf, humming something that sounded a lot like ‘Jack and Jill’.

She sat in the air, cross legged, her wings keeping her afloat, the album in her lap.

Peter stayed frozen against the door, barely breathing. He’d never been so terrified in his life.

-:-

  
Peter turned his head as much as he dared to look at the time.

One eighteen.

The wings should have disappeared eighteen minutes ago.

“I thought you loved me,” Elizabeth said softly. He turned to face her.

“I do love you. More than you can imagine.”

“LIES!” she screamed, flying across the room to him. She shoved the album she’d been looking at right in front of his eyes.

Even though he couldn't see the whole thing, the white dress and decked up church were unmistakable. It was their wedding album.

“Don’t you think that a man who loved his wife like the man in that picture would be able to do something as simple as coming home on time? To hold his wife, tell her how his day went, keep her grounded?”

Peter blinked. He remembered that, from one of their conversations late on a Thursday night.

_“Why do you want me to hold you?”_

_“Your arms keep me grounded. They keep me from flying away, when the wings are just aching to test the skies. If you weren’t holding me, if Mother hadn’t held me, I could be weightless for all that I could do against the wings. I’d probably go flying off into the night. I did once.”_

She was barely an arm's distance from him, standing in the air.

He lunged, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her towards the ground. He made sure that they landed on his back, not her wings. He didn’t know how much that would hurt, but a ballpark figure of ‘a hell of a lot’ probably wasn’t an exaggeration.

“Peter?” she whispered, terrified.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s all right. I was late, I got caught up, but I’m here now. I’m okay. I’m fine.”

“I’m so sorry.” She turned to face him. Tear tracks lined her cheeks already.

Peter wiped them away and kissed her cheek. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten so caught up in the case. I promise you, I will never do it again. I will never get caught up by his cockiness, his charm, whatever it is. Never again.” He took off his overcoat, his hands never leaving her completely, and used it to wipe off the blood that was still on her back.

The wings took two hours and eighteen minutes to disappear. For two hours and eighteen minutes, Peter sat with her on the floor and made promises that he had every intention of keeping.

-:-

  
For the next seven days, Elizabeth cooked his favourite things, walked Satchmo every day and always reached home before him. She did the laundry and the dishes herself and pushed him away when he offered to help.

On Thursday, Peter reached home at eight, despite the team pinning a location on one of James Bonds’ aliases.

They ate dinner together. Peter waited on the couch while Elizabeth did the dishes. They watched half of some chick flick that was on TV before the clock struck eleven thirty.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Peter said. Elizabeth nodded.

As she was tying her hair into a bun, Peter said “You have to stop punishing yourself for this.”

Elizabeth snapped a rubberband onto the bun. “This is my fault. It’s because of me. If I’d just stayed on the ground, then-”

“I would have come home late some other night. I would have taken it for granted that you would be fine without me. This would have happened anyways.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes. “I would have told you about what could happen if you weren’t there, but it’s the worst possible way of making you come home on time and I just couldn’t. Couldn’t. Couldn’t do that to you.” She started hiccupping, trying not to cry.

Peter held his arms out to her.

She threw herself into them, buried her nose in his shoulder and wondered how she’d found such a caring, loving man to share her life with.  



End file.
